A blog by Kurt Keefner, author of KILLING COOL

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Authenticity and Ecology

I often take what you could call an ecological approach to problem solving. I don’t believe in forcing a solution on a situation except when it’s absolutely necessary (which it sometimes is). Instead I would rather harness the natural forces in the situation to take care of the problem. And I would take a hard look at what I or other people are doing that might be creating the problem in the first place.

This is definitely the way I look at achieving authenticity. The path to yourself consists largely of getting out of your own way and then following your natural desire for awareness. These two steps are trickier than they sound, but the solution still comes from within.

The alternative is the force-fit. I think that that way of solving problems is emblematic of Western thinking. It can be very powerful, but sometimes it makes problems worse. For example, children who don’t want to go to school are routinely made to, sometimes kicking and screaming. That’s the force-fit. But at the English school Summerhill, no child is forced to do anything (beyond obeying certain elementary safety rules). Many stay away from classes at first, sometimes for months. But eventually their desire for learning and the atmosphere of trust that has been built up motivates them to go.

When I worked as a Big Brother at a Youth Service Bureau back in the early 1980s, I took a course in parenting. It advocated never using punishment (the force-fit), but instead using natural and logical consequences. If your child refuses to go to bed at bedtime, let him go to school sleepy the next day so that he gets it. If he doesn’t come home for dinner when called, don’t let him go out after school the next day. He can try again the day after. This is an approach to child rearing based on causality (the natural ecology of the situation) rather than on duty (the force-fit).

Adult examples abound as well: heart surgery is the force-fit. Healthy eating and exercise are the ecology. I know some readers are going to bristle at any positive mention of ecology, but if you look at the situation dispassionately, you can see the merits of what I am saying. The idea of a self-correcting free market is a kind of ecological system, and government intervention is the force-fit.

When it comes to authenticity, the force-fit, which simply doesn’t work, is to “express your feelings” and to try to act earnest. The ecological approach is to stop acting like anything, go into yourself and shrug off the hype until you are centered. Then just be yourself.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. You will probably need to identify some bad concepts and habits in your life and check them against reality. However, doing this in a centered state is a whole lot easier than in a hyped up one.

And I don’t mean to imply that the Good Life can be achieved by purely psychological or spiritual means. Philosophy is also essential. In Killing Cool I write about the importance of the concept of the Primacy of Existence, which is the principle that says that reality is independent of the mind. A lot of inauthenticity comes from trying to shape the world purely by one’s wishes.

A good philosophy can help one achieve authenticity in many ways. But that philosophy must be lived from the inside, as it were, and not something forced onto one’s life.